Rumored Title For Judd Apatow’s ‘Knocked Up’ Spin-Off Revealed
By Angie Han/April 15, 2011 7:00 am EST
And if the This is Forty title is correct, it’s probably fair to assume the story has to do with the characters dealing with the fact that they’re entering their middle years, perhaps suffering from the beginnings of a mid-life crisis — which could also fit with Germain’s guess about Fox’s part.
Apatow’s decision to do a spin-off was apparently inspired by the audience’s strong reaction to Pete and Debbie after the first movie:
As much as I loved Pete in Knocked Up — really, I love Rudd in just about anything — it’s really Debbie I’m looking forward to revisiting. The original film portrayed her as uptight and prone to nagging, and though she did get a couple of good scenes that saved her from total “unrepentant shrew” status, I felt that the audience was meant to sympathize more strongly with Pete. It’d be interesting to see more of her perspective in This is Forty (or whatever it ends up being called).
People were really taken by those characters. I think people really emotionally connected to the challenges of their marriage and I thought, you know, they were only a small portion of the movie. I’m a television writer so I always want another episode. I always want another 80 episodes. That’s why after Forgetting Sarah Marshall, we said, ‘What else can we do with this character Russell Brand has created here?’ I felt that way about Pete and Debbie from Knocked Up.
Discuss: But seriously, can you believe Paul Rudd is old enough to be in a movie called This is Forty? (He’s 42 in real life.) He really doesn’t look that much older than he did in his Clueless days, does he? Perhaps he’s been drinking from the same fountain of youth than Will Smith has apparently been swimming in.
